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Red Light Camera Revenues Paying for Philly Bike Lane Improvements

The bike lane at 6th & Market has been painted green, replacing old faded blue paint (you can see it in lower-left corner).

You may have seen some new green paint in Philadelphia bike lanes. You can thank red light cameras for some of that paint. The City of Philadelphia is using Automated Red Light Enforcement funds (ARLE) to stripe new bike lanes and improve existing bike lanes at intersections.

Known as the Bicycle Encourage and Enhancement Project, the bulk of the money will pay for installing green paint at 34 conflict zones where bike lanes cross over right-turn lanes. The first one going in is at 6th and Market. Fifteen years ago, Philadelphia painted these conflict zones blue, which at the time was an innovative treatment. The anti-skid green paint is more durable than the now-faded (or entirely gone) blue paint of yore.

Some other highlights of this project include:

Spring Garden Street West Gateway: new and improved bike lane markings and bike boxes connecting Spring Garden St to Eakins Oval. (This project is being funded by the William Penn Foundation and was coordinated by the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.)

Columbus Blvd: new bike lane lines between Race St and Spring Garden, replacing the City’s first shared-lane markings (installed before the adoption of the modern sharrow).

Torresdale Avenue: refreshing bike lanes along Torresdale from Linden Ave in the far Northeast to O Street adjacent to the Erie-Torresdale Station.

John Boyle

Author

John has been a commuting cyclist for more than 20 years. In 1994 he began working as a volunteer for the Bicycle Coalition of the Delaware Valley after attending a volunteer night, and later served as a board member in 1997-98. In 1999 John left Philadelphia for Charlottesville, VA, where he helped establish the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation (ACCT), a bicycle and walking advocacy group.

Crashes went up on Roosevelt Blvd, but fatalities went down dramatically in that time period (124 to 43). But more to the point, the article offers no specific data from the intersections with cameras and how they compare with non-camera intersections on the highway.